


Let Go

by shinyhappyfitsofrage



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Romance, Season 2, its funny and then it is not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 06:43:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5818099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinyhappyfitsofrage/pseuds/shinyhappyfitsofrage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been a week and she hasn’t laughed at a single one of Wally’s joke.</p><p>requested by anonymous for #40: have I entered an alternate universe, or did you just crack a smile for me?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Go

**Author's Note:**

> do not be fooled: this is happy then it is sad

It’s been a week and she hasn’t laughed at a single one of Wally’s jokes.

This is not only annoying, its also a sign of a universal crisis they may have on their hands. If there is one thing he knows about himself, it’s that he’s outrageously, uproariously funny. It is his greatest strength (besides the whole  _Usain Bolt who?_ thing). It’s a fundamental law of physics that all human beings have to laugh at his jokes, at the very least once a day. Does he ever deliver a rare miss? Of course. Does he occasionally mock someone’s deepest insecurity without knowing? Sure. He’s only human - well, no, that isn’t technically true, _but the_ point is that he has a ninety-nine to one ratio of brilliant jokes to only okay jokes. And people laugh. They really do. Dick lets out a witch-like cackle. Kaldur smirks and tries to look stern and ultimately fails. M'gann giggles into the palm of her hand (its adorable and he is in love with her). Connor - okay, Connor doesn’t really laugh at his jokes as much as look at everyone else with grumpy confusion, but Wally is willing to give him a pass on that one, considering the fact he isn’t quite sure Connor knows exactly what a joke is.

But Artemis doesn’t cackle, or fail at looking stern, or giggle, or look at everyone else with grumpy confusion. Rather, she rolls her eyes, and crosses her arms, and says something irritably under her breath. At first, Wally is annoyed in general at her, and then as time progresses, his annoyance becomes more specific and more pointed toward that one transgression, like a stick being whittled to a perfect stake (her being a vampire is a very likely explanation, and Wally spends a whole day purifying bottles of water and placing them strategically in the fridge for her to stumble upon). Why won’t she just _laugh_? He wants to know what her laugh is. He knows everyone else’s, and not knowing hers is like seeing the birthday cake and being told you can’t eat it. It drives him mad. During mission briefings he stares at her and tries to imagine what sort of sound it would be. A deep, throaty laugh? A half-laugh, half exhale? His nightmares are filled with images of her smiling widely and noiselessly. It’s horrific.

The less she laughs at him, the more he tries to make her laugh. The more he tries to make her laugh the more he hates himself for trying so hard to impress her. And the more he hates himself the more he just desperately wishes she would chuckle or chortle, snicker or snigger at his jokes. It’s a vicious cycle, he realises exactly a week after she joined their team, purely, it seemed, to lower his self-esteem, as he reaches for a bottle of holy water from the fridge.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” he says with a tone of wonder, one hand still on the fridge door.

M'gann is sitting on the counter, her eyebrows furrowed at a quiz in J-14 Magazine. “What _spice_ am I? I don’t know any spices. Wally, help, what’s the different between baby and posh?”

“It’s a vicious cycle!” He whirls around to face her, water bottle in one hand. Her perfect eyes blink at him from under prim, perfect eyebrows.

“What is?”

“Artemis,” he says. Opening the water bottle, he takes a swig, feeling completely satisfied. “I’ve done it. I’ve solved everything. Confucian has absolutely nothing on me. Elect me as president.”

M'gann shakes her gorgeous head adamantly. “No, Wally! Artemis is really nice! I mean, yes, she is a little… honest and she really does not understand the difference between a private thought and a thought you should share with everyone, especially thoughts about -” She takes a breath, suddenly flustered. “Um, but other than that, she’s super nice.”

“No, not Artemis,” says Wally dismissively. Then he cocks his head. “Well, yes, Artemis, but I’m talking about the vicious cycle that her refusal to laugh at my jokes has created. It has absorbed my life. It has consumed me. It’s time to break free.” He begins pacing across the linoleum, only vaguely aware of the water sloshing from the empty bottle onto himself. “The first step is admitting there is a problem. Easy peasy. It’ll be hard, but I’ll just have to ignore her. I’ve been playing all my jokes to her and that has seriously hurt my laugh to miss ratio. Plus jokes are always funnier when the artist is not aware of his audience, so this might even help me make her - no, Wally, stop. This is an intervention. You are way too invested, man. I should’ve realised it earlier, but oh well. No one is perfect. Besides you, of course, Megs.” He glances up to gauge her reaction. She smiles sweetly, but doesn’t look particularly turned on; rather, it’s like a small child brought her a boquet of hastily picked dandelions. Wally frowns. He will have to work on that.

“You shouldn’t care what other people think of you,” she says helpfully. Then she blushes. She does that a lot. It’s adorable and he is in love with her. “I mean… that’s what they say, you know?”

“You’re right, they do say it,” he agrees. “And so do I. From this point forward I am putting my foot down. A new, stronger Wally is emerging from this old, decrepit, remarkably handsome shell. Did she think I would crumble? Did she think I would just - just lay down and die? Well, boy have I got _news_ for you, Miss I Have No Sense of Humor - I _will_ survive.”

By the end of this triumphant assertion he somehow finds himself gripping M'gann’s shoulders with wild tenacity. She eyes his hands. “I feel like this anger is misplaced,” she says gently.

At this moment Artemis chooses to stroll into the kitchen like she owns the place, humming a Duran Duran song cheerfully. Wally steps away from M'gann and leans against the counter, eyeing her with disdain as she approaches the fridge.

“Just to let you know,” he says snobbishly, “I am over it.”

Her hand on the fridge handle, she turns to face him. “I know you’re hoping oh so desperately in your tiny little hamster heart that I’ll ask what you’re talking about,” she says brightly, “but the thing is, I just don’t care!” She gives M'gann a look, as if to say _See? This is what I have to deal with,_ and then opens the fridge.

Wally remembers that he’d laid a trap for her as soon as he sees her neck move forward in surprise. She yanks the fridge door open, stepping aside with it to gesture to the thirty two water bottles carefully positioned under a lined paper sign reading “For Artemis”, a look of bewildered annoyance on her face. “What is this?” she demands.

“Uh….” He rubs the back of neck, glancing at M'gann for support. She shrugs (when they are married, he’ll teach her how to bail someone out of an uncomfortable situation). “Props for my low-budget remake of _Titanic_?”

She stares at him for several seconds, her mouth slightly open, her eyebrows slightly raised, and then the unthinkable laughs. She laughs. It starts as low and stifled, and she presses the tops of her fingers to her lips in a half-assed attempt to stop herself, and then she blows air of her nose, and it is over. She laughs, truly, genuinely laughs. Its different than he expected; raw and almost hoarse, but still warm at the same time, and it sort of sounds like a fire pit crackling and burning despite the wind trying to smother it. She laughs, one hand brushing her hair back, and Wally is incapable of doing anything but staring at the way her lips curl back and the way her shoulders shake and he is in love with it and oh God, he is in love with her.

She finishes in a matter of seconds (it feels like a forever, like a ending in a movie that is both happy and artistically satisfying). “Fine, but you’re Kate Winslet, you moron,” she says, only this time fondly. She grabs a water bottle, taking a sip as she strolls out of the kitchen. He is too stunned to notice that she doesn’t dissolve into a pile of ash and therefore cannot be a vampire.

“See, Wally, she’s nice!” says M'gann cheerfully. “Meanwhile, I still don’t know what spice I am -”

“Baby,” he says, but he’s not really there.

* * *

 

“I knew I loved you when you laughed,” he confesses into her shoulder blade, speaking to a scar she got their first week at Stanford after she crashed her bike into the fence. “Remember that first time, in the kitchen? It was that super dumb Titanic joke, and it was just that second, and then after that I was sort of able to forget it, but not really. It was always there, you know, like… you know when at the end of your dentist appointment you book a new one for six months later, and your life continues like normal, but somewhere in the back of your mind you know sort of vaguely that it’s coming up, and suddenly its December and you remember it again?”

“Wow, so romantic,” she drawls. “I feel wooed out of mind right now.”

“Hardy har har,” he says, rolling his eyes. “But for real, Artemis. I’m being absolutely straight with you.”

"Mmm,” she says sleepily, and he almost suggests that maybe she close her eyes, and let herself drift off, but to do that would offend her, because this could be the last night left in their whole, stupid world. “I remember that. You were a pain in the ass for the rest of week. You kept bringing it up to everyone. I wanted to castrate you.”

“I had a right to be proud!” he insists. “You were unimpressed by everything. Samuel L. Jackson himself could’ve drove straight to your front door on a vintage Harley Davidson reciting Hamlet’s opening monologue in perfect Vietnamese and you would’ve been like, ‘Great, go fuck yourself’.”

Her laughter is soft and quiet, and only just shakes her bones. “I hate to break it to you,” she says, “but I laughed at your joke that day because I was in a good mood because during training I’d fallen onto Connor and I thought we had a moment.”

Wally frowns, lifting his head from her collarbone and moving back on his forearms to stare at her, bewildered. “Are you serious?”

She nods, watching him with bleary, humming amusedly. “Sorry. I hope you can forgive me.”

“For _give_  you? This changes everything! That achievement motivated me for _months_ , Artemis. Months! And that - what about - is every time you laughed at my jokes because you and Connor were _boning_?” he exclaims indignantly.

She laughs for real time, pulling him closer to her and snuggling into him. “Wally,” she coos. She presses her lips to his cheek, just under his eye. “It was a really clever comeback. I really do think it was funny.”

“Yeah, right,” he says, rolling his eyes, but he strokes her hair anyway, and all is right again. On the nightstand by the other side of the bed, the clock reads 2:38. The moon casts a watery light onto the crumpled clothes, the kicked aside rain boots, and the duffel bag. The damn duffel bag. He exhales. Everything is wrong again. “Guess you’re Kate Winslet this time,” he says softly.

It doesn’t make her laugh this time. She stops moving, and he listens as she takes several deep breaths. “I’m sorry,” she chokes out into his chest, and he spends the next forty-five minutes rubbing her back and whispering words that are either vague half-truths or blatant lies. Any attempt to cheer her up only makes her cry harder.

His one strength is making people laugh, but, like everything else, it seems like it’s disappearing.


End file.
